Sports

Bob Wolfley | SportsDay

McGuire 'magic' recalled

Dick Enberg uses the word "magic" to describe the kind of impact Al McGuire had on him as a broadcasting colleague and as a friend.

It was that magic Enberg pursued with a net and captured for the one-man play he wrote, "McGuire," which will be reprised by actor Cotter Smith on Saturday and Sunday at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta.

Smith first played the part of the Marquette coach for Milwaukee audiences in June 2005 at the Helfaer Theatre on the Marquette campus.

On Saturday night on CBS-TV before a national television audience, Enberg will narrate a feature about McGuire's Marquette team that won the championship 30 years ago in Atlanta, the site of this year's Final Four.

During a phone conversation earlier this week, Enberg, 72, talked about his friend who died in 2001.

"If you had a few minutes with Al McGuire, you probably left remembering something for a lifetime," Enberg said. "I think about him most every day. That's true of a lot of people. I'm not the only one. In fact, even my wife who is not a big basketball fan and met Al only after we were married said, 'I could tell right away he was a rascal, but I loved him anyway.' He had that kind of touch with people."

In life, Enberg knew a few guys who went by the name of Al McGuire. He put all of them in his play.

Enberg wasn't close to the McGuire who coached.

"There was so little access to Al for me," Enberg said. "I didn't like him. He was one of the very few coaches that I couldn't quite grab.

"Most coaches were there at practice. They were there before the game and at least you got some insight into them, what they might have going strategically during the game. But not Al. He wouldn't be at practice the day before. He wouldn't come onto the floor until we were on the air.

"Part of that was by design. He just didn't want too many people in his inner circle. He just couldn't embrace too many different folks. He limited that. He had that electrical field around him.

"But once you got inside, this character became something more than real. Someone who had such a depth of insight. Someone eager to share with me because he felt I was too farm-boy naïve and people would take advantage of me so he thought he better teach me some street lessons in life."

The closed-in coach as a broadcaster made his personality more available to a television audience.

"As a broadcaster he become another persona," Enberg said. "In fact, Al said a couple of years into broadcasting, 'People are starting to like me. I don't know who the real Al McGuire is any more. Is it that character that ranted and raved on the sidelines and liked to walk along a curb after losing a game? Or is it this Al McGuire where people think I'm actually clever and even funny?' "

Of course, the answer is both were real.

McGuire and UCLA's John Wooden are the only two college basketball coaches to announce they were going to retire and then win a national championship. Early in his career, Enberg called UCLA basketball games when the Bruins were on their championship run under Wooden.

Do those two coaches share anything else?

"They are on opposite ends of the continuum," Enberg said. "If Al is down on the left side, then coach Wooden is way up there on the right side. Al had great affection for Coach Wooden and Wooden really liked Al. I don't know exactly the reason. But I think Al was so much different. That's what attracted all of us. He was as different from Coach Wooden as could be."

Enberg recalled the time McGuire made his first trip to New Zealand and asked Wooden, who had visited there a few times, for some contacts. Wooden provided a few names and numbers for people he knew.

"Then Coach Wooden told me that he never heard from Al and his friends in New Zealand never heard from Al," Enberg said. "He finally corralled Al and asked him, 'Why didn't you go to those people I gave you numbers for? They're nice people. They were expecting you. I told them you were coming.' Al said, 'Ah coach, I would have ruined your reputation.' "